Kevin Garnett is a future Hall-of-Famer and easily the best player to ever suit-up for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Let’s take a look at the 15 greatest moments of his career in a Wolves uniform.
Take a look at the 30 best players to to ever set foot on the court for the Minnesota Timberwolves, and you’ll find that there aren’t many Hall-of-Famers on it. Heck, there aren’t even all that many All-Stars — only seven total, in fact.
But the easy No. 1 on said list, and on nearly every single franchise record to date, is Kevin Garnett.
Garnett made the All-Star team 10 times in his first 12 seasons, led the Wolves to eight consecutive playoff appearances and won the league MVP award in 2004 while bringing his squad all the way to the Western Conference Finals, achieving the only playoff series win(s) in franchise history in the process.
KG is a consensus top-25 NBA player of all-time, and some lists would certainly have him in the top 20; it’s impossible to imagine another Wolves player coming along and unseating Garnett at the top of the Wolves’ all-time hierarchy.
Garnett had plenty of memorable moments with the team, and not all of them are individual game performances.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane and relive the 15 greatest moments of Garnett’s time in Minnesota.
15. Garnett scores 40 on 22 shots to beat Sacramento
The Timberwolves were still a young, up-and-coming team in 2001, and Garnett himself was just 24 years old.
The Wolves were 31-18 coming into the Feb. 7 showdown with the 31-15 Sacramento Kings, and it appeared as though Minnesota was ready to make some serious noise in the stacked Western Conference.
On this night, Garnett and his teammates did not disappoint. The Wolves decimated the Kings, jumping out to a 41-10 lead at the end of the first quarter — and this is a Sacramento team that went on to win 55 games and was a perennial contender in the West. They weren’t a pushover by any stretch of the imagination.
Garnett had the most efficient game of his career, knocking down 17 shots on 22 attempts (77.3 percent) and making both of his 3-point attempts and all four of his free throws. He got to 40 points in just 34 minutes, and the game was all but over by the time the horn sounded at the end of the first quarter.
Garnett also added seven rebounds and six assists in this dismantling of the Kings. His 17 made field goals tied for third-most in KG’s career for a single game, and, remarkably, came on only 22 shots.
This isn’t the only time the Kings will appear on this list, either. There were many memorable matchups between Minnesota and Sacramento, and more specifically, Garnett and Chris Webber, as we’ll find out shortly.